ECLECTIC PHARMACY. 
331 
perfect apparatus, and the labor and time employed, constitute the larger 
portion of the expense of production, so that the physician or even the 
druggist will seldom find it good economy to prepare for themselves." 
From what has been quoted it will appear that this article is, 
in fact, an advertisement of the preparations of the said W. S. 
Merrill, A. M., designed to introduce them to the notice of Phy- 
sicians and the trade, as his own, and intimating that they are 
prepared by a difficult process not conveniently resorted to by 
pharmaceutists generally. It is evidently intended, rather to dis- 
courage any attempts to prepare them, than to invite the co-ope- 
ration of pharmaceutists by a candid and full detail of the pro- 
cess and its results. 
This view is strengthened by a remark occurring somewhat 
farther on in the article, as follows : 
" The cost of obtaining the pure resinoid principles from our different in- 
digenous plants, varies considerably, according to the price of the material 
and the amount of yield, but for the sake of convenience we have fixed on 
one dollar per ounce, as the uniform price of them all, at present, with the 
usual commercial discount to those who buy in quantity to re-sell." 
Now whatever may be our views of the propriety of this mode 
of advertising, as practised in a professedly scientific Journal, 
under the guise of contributing to the common stock of profes- 
sional knowledge, it must be admitted that in this case it has 
been scarcely less successful than the more open quackery of 
certain other manufacturers of medicinal preparations. 
These so-called resinoids have attained a very considerable sale, 
and from being used almost exclusively in the West, where they 
originated, have been introduced into our market and into 
those of New York and Boston. 
I have thought the results of some experiments in preparing 
them worthy of a place in the Journal, for the information of any 
who may have calls for them, and would suggest that the names 
by which these pharmaceutical preparations are designated, should 
not be confounded with those applied to the pure resinoid princi- 
ples they contain. As well might the Calasaya Extract of Ellis 
be called quinia, as the impure resinoid substance precipitated 
from a tincture of May-apple, by the above process, podophyllin. 
The same remark applies to other resinous roots, and in the 
event of the adoption of a class of resinous extracts into Phar- 
